As of Tuesday, more than 111,500 folks had joined an online crusade to save Windows XP. Microsoft has said that after June 30, Windows Vista will be the only option for all but ultra-low-cost PCs.

InfoWorld Executive Editor Galen Gruman started the brouhaha with his now-infamous “Save Windows XP” online petition. Gruman wants Microsoft to imitate its Windows Millennium Edition move — keep selling Windows XP until a version of the Windows operating system debuts that the petitioners want.

“Millions of us have grown comfortable with XP and don’t see a need to change to Vista. It’s like having a comfortable apartment that you’ve enjoyed coming home to for years, only to get an eviction notice,” the petition reads.

A poor Long-Term Position?

Despite the petition, some analysts think XP fans could be cutting off their nose to spite Microsoft. Directions on Microsoft analyst Michael Cherry struggles for an reply in the Vista-versus-XP debate, and is concerned

that consumers could wind up in a poor position long-term whether they insist on continuing with XP.

“The decision within Vista and XP is a difficult decision considering Vista has some pretty intense hardware requirements. So on one side I can see that customers who want to purchase machines that don’t have the hardware profile to run Vista may not want to run Vista basic and might prefer to run XP,” Cherry said. “But on the other hand, there are some features XP is lost that consumers should be concerned about.”

A case in point is Vista’s User explanation Control. Cherry says its not good for consumers to continue to run as administrator when User detail Control is a better solution. The goal of the control is to reduce the operating system’s exposure to attack by requiring all users to run in standard mode.

“Certainly XP is going to…

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